What is the Electoral College? | Podcast Clip

in Broad terms and then we can kind of get more into the Nuance of it what exactly is the Electoral College the Electoral College uh and by the way let me start by saying the term electoral college does not appear in the Constitution uh it's the it's uh it's never used in the Constitution it was not the term that was used by the framers and it wasn't even used much in the 19th century um in the 19th century there was a common reference to the Electoral colleges which was the meeting of of electors in in in the capital of each state after an election the term Electoral College as a phrase to describe the whole system really is a 20th century term or predominantly a 20th century term so having clean cleared up the language right here at the outset um what is the Electoral College uh it is a it is a complicated system them for um for choosing presidents um by uh States um and that tries to reflect the powers of the states um or tries to I'm sorry tries to reflect reflect the the assembled influence of the state that's not well stated so let let let me let me let me talk about the specific mechanics of how it works it's a system where each state gets a number of electoral votes based on the number of of Representatives that house in the House of Representatives plus two for uh its Senators so it's basically the number of electoral votes mirrors the representation of a state in in Congress that's that's sort of the first step that is obviously the weight that each state gets in the election um in the Constitution as written um it is left to each state to decide how it will choose its electors there is no requirement that there be a popular election there's no requirement in the US Constitution that there be a popular election and certainly W winner take all the system that we know today and that's present in 48 of the 50 states um does not seem to be what most of the framers had in mind they thought that electors would be chosen by District at the outset the first 10 15 years uh actually the first 30 years but even right at the outset many states did choose their electors by District others did it um through winter take all which was then called the general ticket um and in still other states the legislators chose electors by themselves without any popular elections so you have you have this constitutional framework of how much influence state gets you have latitude left to the states um to uh decide how they're going to choose electors and then the and then as the system proceeds um the notion is that uh these electors and as originally framed that it was believed that they would deliberate that they that these would be the per the purpose of this was to have people who were wise and experience that might know National politics they would meet in each uh state capital on the same day doing on the same day to avoid excessive influence or corruption from one state to another they would meet on the same day they would cast their electoral votes those electoral votes would be sent uh to Congress in the process which we all became vividly familiar with um four four years ago but there's one other feature which really has to be mentioned uh here um which is that uh many of the Famers of the Constitution and this is still in the Constitution did not think that these that the Electoral College or the electoral votes would as a rule be deciding the election in the minds of the framers again there was no there was no party system in their minds indeed they they were skeptical to say the least the parties they didn't want parties there were certainly no two-p party system and the common belief was that there would be three four five six candidates for president and as a result it was widely believed that it that uh frequently that nobody would get a majority of the electoral votes because the electoral votes determines the presidency only if one candidate gets a majority okay and then so they created also what is now referred to as the contingent system which is if nobody gets a majority then the election reverts to the House of Representatives which is the more popular house um and more numerous house but with a strange election rule that every state uh only gets one vote so no matter how large how small um each state gets one vote and that contingent system is also s uh not very Democratic uh as it operates it was widely denounced but it was used only twice in 188 24 yeah it's interesting that sort of safety net because of safety net of Congress choosing the president if one candidate didn't get the electoral votes because one of the big concerns of the founders was that if Congress chose the president then the president would be more beholden to the interest of Congress as opposed to the American people I don't that's exactly right I mean in in the debates in Philadelphia uh writing the Constitution you know having Congress choose the president was kind of the default position for a lot of people and then they would do a straw vote and and they most people more people would favor that than anything else but then everybody would shake their heads and say just what you what you uh iterated which was that the um you know this is not a good idea Congress would control the president Etc um but that's also why I may also be why they uh they they opted for this system this contingent system where each state delegation it wasn't really Congress voting um I mean in fact to back up a little bit uh if it's okay to say something about the origins of how they came up with this design um that you know again they this was one of the subjects this was one of the difficult subjects that they encountered they could not agree on how to choose a president they kept going around and around in this uh in the summer of 18 uh 1787 um and you know in fact they got to the end of the summer uh and they had resolved many issues including the two big issues um which would have had to do with uh with whether there would be a bamal legislature or not and whether the legislature would be based on population or every state would have equal representation and then the the other big issue was slavery um they got to the end of the summer they had resolved most of these things but they still hadn't reached a decision about how to choose the chief executive so they did what any good group would do at um at they went on vacation um and left behind a quotes committee on unfinished Parts uh and said you guys deal with it you know it's Philadelphia it's late August um you know so we're tired it's hot here um so you guys work it out and we'll come back in a week and tell us what you came up with and it was this committee and unfinished parts that came up with this and to say something about the rationale of the design is that part of what it did was to incorporate the compromises that have been made on the two big conflictual issues uh into the Electoral College design so that those issues didn't have to be reopened I.E that it it's it said um you know the in deciding how many uh electoral votes each state would get um it it basically said well it's the equivalent of the number of members of Congress that you have and we've already hammered that out it would be one one one chamber based on population and the other not and then by doing doing it that way they also implicitly um sort of transferred the Three-Fifths cause uh in uh into presidential elections as well so in a certain way the Electoral College is a replica of Congress although its members cannot be members of Congress but it's a replica of Congress which avoids the corruption and undo influence issues in the fact that the Electoral College only meet once and then dissolves uh so it there's no there's no fear of ongoing influence [Music]